3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Second Best - but the "best" part is much more important!,, February 18, 2009
This review is from: Further Cuttings: From Cruiskeen Lawn (Paperback)
The very title suggests quite clearly what you are in for - another selection of cuttings from The Cruiskeen Lawn, a comic column in The Irish Times written by Brian O'Nolan a.k.a. Flann O'Brien a.k.a. Myles na Gopaleen between 1940 and 1965.
This volume generally follows the structure of "The Best of Myles" disregarding the chronological order. It is quite neat but rather not in the spirit of the original publication which was quite purposefully absolutely unexpected in its structure and sequence. In some chapters this reorganization helps the reader to see development which otherwise could be lost but there are others where a sequence of fairly similar cuttings can get rather tedious.
If O'Brien's crazy and abstract sense of humor is your cup of tea, it doesn't really matter where you start. You will be drawn into it and beg for more (fortunately there are at least four other selections). You should be warned, however, that it is a kind of acquired taste and may not agree with your tastebuds at all. In the latter case, however, it doesn't really matter which of the selections turns you off, does it?
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A LATE AND MINOR MYLES MARRED BY LACK OF NOTES AND DATES; TRY AT WAR FIRST, July 2, 2010
This review is from: Further Cuttings: From Cruiskeen Lawn (Paperback)
This Dalkey (based apparently in Illinois) reprint of an earlier collection of later near daily columns by Brian O'Nolan for the Irish Times is uneven and most marred by the lack of any notes or most importantly dates.
Apparently the columns in the Irish language only were transposed into English, yet we are left with large passages in Irish, fragments in Latin, and in fact an entire column in Latin and other languages as well. If such a polyglot nature does not alarm you but rather inspires you to translation left entirely on your own, this is the book for you.
Not only do we find this in several tongues, with no support, with no notes, not even biographical of those historical figures mentioned, and purposefully undated, but also arranged by this collection's editor by an artificially imposed scheme of "themes" not original to the author, whose modus operandi involved a greatly varied style from day to day, always a surprise, a large part of the charm. Here we get bogged down in themes, and thus, fatally for humour, near repetitions, especially in the courtroom sequences.
Do not get me wrong. I deeply love Myles, or Flann, or Brian. I urge you to hear the masterful reading by Jim Norton of O'Nolan's immortal masterwork
Third Policeman, having read first the text
The Third Policeman, or doing a simultaneous reading, to observe how the scholarly references to De Selby are handled, an to follow the conversations with the soul, or guardian angel or whatever it is textually. This clears up several points. This is for me the greatest of Flann, or Brian, or Myles, and a must read in its own right, and like the works of James Joyce himself, had trouble ever getting published in its author's lifetime, but was far less skillfully reworked as
The Dalkey Archive which in its very end turns into little more than a shaggy dog love triangle, as if the author late lost the vision and the fire, the train and the hope.
Joyce on the other hand, after despairing of finding publication for
Stephen Hero, resurrected it, distilled it, repackaged it, as
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Perhaps this partially serves as Nolan's own despair, ever walking under the shadow of that giant. We find here upon each page something reminiscent of Mr. Joyce, whether place names, personages, or turns of phrase, and thus we wonder whether this supplies us context for the works of Joyce, or is derivative of those landmark works.
For example we read here a valiant initial attempt, which ultimately falls sadly shallow, at a eulogy for the great Oliver St. John Gogarty, he of
Oliver St. John Gogarty (The Irish Writers Series) and so much more, the figure they say for Buck Mulligan and author of Mulligan's poetry. We here hope therefore to read a moving eulogy; the attempt is made,and you judge the result, I cannot. This edition provides no biographical information for Gogarty.
These come from columns written to be read in the Irish Times; hung-over and idly, and here they are served ripped from all and any context, bare naked, without that which gives them full sense, parody and all humour. We do not even have their date of publication to research that context upon our own.
Therefore I reluctantly grant this particular collection a mere three stars for the packaging, a most unfortunate and unfair reason, but the only possible assignation in all honesty. For these columns I strongly suggest you read the excellent collection published complete with notes and dates oddly by this same publisher under the title
At War (Lannan Selection). Very little is said of war, but a much richer collection is provided, with indication of date and of context.
This present collection sorely needs annotation, and remains like those nefarious collections of untuned, interred practice tapes never intended for release by our quickly deceased rock giants of the sixties.
Read properly and in context, we realize that Myles, or Flann, or Brian, was our first and original blogger, and remains our funniest, never a bitter old troll, but a skilled and fascinating blogger commenting upon the absurdities of the times, and of our human condition.
This collection needs give greater hint of the context of those times, or at least a date, and so receives reluctantly three stars only.
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